National haulage stoppage
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• Last Saturday night the committee of the "National Transport Action Group" decided to postpone the nation-wide stoppage by long-distance drivers which had been planned to commence at midnight next Sunday. The decision was taken, said the action group, to allow time for the committee to attempt to convene a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport to discuss its views against the Transport Bill and the possibility of hardship to the nation if the committee was forced into taking industrial action.
Meantime, the Scottish element in the action groups had decided not to take part in the stoppage but, instead, to hold a protest rally starting from Fraserburgh, via Aberdeen, Dundee, Forfar and Stirling to Glasgow.
On Sunday the action group's protest rally to Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park was postponed at the eleventh hour. Committee secretary Mr. Edgar Child, of Stoke-on-Trent, said he was told only on the previous day that the Police and the Ministry of Public Building and Works could not permit the rally because there
was one already arranged by another organization.
Mr. Child's trip to London was not in vain for he joined a 500-strong march by East Anglian drivers which was held in the morning. Called by King's Lynn and district drivers' action group, this march was supported by similar groups from Ipswich, Diss, Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds, Cambridge, Wisbech, Northampton, Boston and Peterborough.